In The Idea ofBiblical Interpretation: Essaas in Honor of ...€¦ · pp. 399-422.Supplementsto the Journal for the Study of Judaism, 83. Leiden: Brill, 2004. J\10SES AND THE COMMANDMENTS:

In The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essaas in Honor ofJames L. Kugel,·ed. Hlndy Najman and Iu ith H. Newman,pp. 399-422.Supplements to the Journal for the Study ofJudaism, 83. Leiden: Brill, 2004.

J\10SES AND THE COMMANDMENTS:CAN HER1VIENEUTICS, HISTORY, AND RHETORIC

BE DISENTANGLED?

STEVEN D. FRAADE

I. THE BOOK OF lVIosES

What precisely was the nature and extent of Moses' intermediaryrole in the transmission of the divine commandments to Israel atMt. Sinai and thereafter, and in the creation. of the written record(Torah) of that communication? This question has perplexed bibli­cal interpreters from Scripture's very origins until the present. I Theaccount of the revelation at Mt, Sinai is famously ambiguous as towhich commandments were directly communicated to the Israelitesby God, and which only via Moses at God's instruction, either thenor subsequently in the Tent of Meeting." From the perspective of

1 I have dealt previously with rabbinic understandings of revelation, including itsmediated nature, in the following publications: Prom Tradition to Commentary: TorahandIts Interpretation in the Midrasl: Sjfre to Deuteronomy (Albany: State University of NewYork Press, 1991), 25-68; "Rabbinic Views on the Practice of Targum, andMultilingualism in the Jewish Galilee of the Third-Sixth Centuries," in The Galileein Late Antiqui~ (ed. L. I. Levine; New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary ofAmerica, 1992), 253-86; ,,,r-rhe Kisses of His Mouth': Intimacy and Intermediacyas Performative Aspects of a Midrash Commentary," in Textual Reasonings: leuishPhilosop~ and Text Study at theEnd ofthe Twentieth Century (ed. P. Ochs and N. Levene;London: SC~~, 2002), 52-56.

2 For example, does the change from first to third person speech with respect toGod after Exod 20:6 (that is, following the second commandment by Jewish reck­oning) denote a change in the speaker from God to Moses? What is the relationof what was communicated to Moses during his first forty-day sojourn on Mt. Sinai(Exod 24:3-18; before the incident of the Golden Calf) to that which was com­municated to him during his second forty-day sojourn on Mt. Sinai (34:27-28; afterthe Golden Calf)? The Book of Deuteronomy assumes that only the Decalogue wasdelivered to the people at Sinai, the rest having been conveyed to Moses at Sinaibut not delivered by him to the people until they reached the land of Moab andprepared to enter the promised land. See Deut 5:19, 28; 6:1; 10:4. This is in con­trast to Exod 24:3-8; 35:1,4; Lev 7:38; 25:1; 26:46; 27:34. According to the Bookof Numbers (26:3; 33:50; 35:1; 36:13) the instructions for a census, dividing theland, conquest of the land, and designation of the Levitical cities of refuge werenot communicated until the covenant at Moab. For continuing revelation after Sinai,

biblical tradition, to what extent was Moses' intermediary role requiredfrom the beginning by the impossibility of an ongoing direct encounterbetween God and ordinary humans, or only as a concession to thepeople's fear of engaging the divine presence directly." To whatextent did Moses record the divine commandments immediately, asif by divine dictation, or only subsequently from his memory and/orin his own words?' To what extent is the book that comes to becalled the Torah (Pentateuch) the direct product of the divine rev­elation at Mt. Sinai or the cumulative record of Moses' ongoingintermediary activity up to (or even beyond) his deathi" Put differently,when biblical writers refer to Moses' having commanded the peo­ple, is that simply shorthand for God's having commanded the peo­ple through Mosesi" Or, when later the biblical writers speak of theTorah as the "Torah of Moses," or the "Book of Moses," or the"Book of the Torah of Moses," in what sense is he assumed to havebeen its "author," and if he is not, what degree of editorial and/ortransmissional credit is he being giveni" In sum, was Moses' media-

as interpreted in rabbinic literature, the following is still useful for its collection ofsources: BernardJ. Bamberger, "Revelations of Torah after Sinai," HllGA 16 (1941):97-113.

3 See Exod 3:6; 19:21; 20:15-18 (18-21); 33:18-20; Deut 5:5, 20-24..~ A~ the "author" of the Temple Scroll is well aware (and seeks to rectify), the

Book of Deuteronomy is particularly problematic in this regard, since it presentsitself narratively as Moses' own retelling of what previously transpired and was pre­viously divinely commanded (in the preceding three books of the Pentateuch), evenwhere Deuteronomic commandments are previously absent or different. Hence,· theTemple Scroll's transformation of Moses' third person references to God's com­mandments into God's own first person commanding voice can be understood asa way of asserting that Moses spoke the word of God. See Moshe \Veinfeld, "Godversus Moses in the Temple Scroll," &vQ 15 (1991): 175-80. See below, n. 27.

5 What does it mean (Deut 31:24) that Moses wrote "the words of this Torahon a scroll to their very end" if the last eight verses of Deuteronomy follow' hisdeath? The problem of the "authorship" of these final eight verses of Torah fol­lowing Moses' death is acknowledged by Sifre Deut. 357 (Finkelstein ed., 427-28);h. B. "~ 15a (harai/a); b.. 1\1ena1J.. 30a (haraita); where several solutions are pro­posed. cr. Philo, Mos. 2.291. Note also the talmudic discussion (h. GiJ. 60a, withRashi) of whether Moses wrote the Torah "scroll by scroll" in chronological pro­gression, or all at once shortly before his death.

6 For the former, see Exod 16:24; Lev 9:5, 21; and especially Deut 33:4: "Mosescommanded us [the] Torah." Similarly, Josh 1:13; 8:31, 33, 35; 11:12; 22:2, 5; 2Kgs 18:12; 21:8; 1 Chr 6:34; 15:15; 2 Chr 8:13. l'he expression "I [Moses] havecommanded (il'~O)" appears some thirty-seven times in the Book of Deuteronomy,whereas it is used only once in Deuteronomy with God as the third person sub­ject (26:16), and once in the Tetrateuch with God as the first person subject (Exod34:11). For God's commanding "through Moses" (i1WO '''::1) sec Exod 35:29; Lev8:36; Num 4:49; 15:23; 27:23; 36:"13; Josh 14:2; 21:2, 8; Nch 9:14.

400 STEVEN D. FRAADE

MOSES AND THE COM~lANDMENTS 401

rive role in the transmission of the commandments to the people apurely passive, conductive one, or did he have a more active, trans­formative role in the process of translating the commandments fromdivine source to human targets? These are questions that are notsimply answered by the scriptural text itself, opaque and multivalentas it is, and therefore of necessity demand the efforts of scriptural

1 For the first, see Josh 8:32; 1 Kgs 2:3; 2 Kgs 23:25; Mal 3:22; Dan 9:11, 13;Ezra 3:2; 7:6; 2 Chr 23:18; 30:16; for the second, see Ezra 6:18; Neh 13:1; 2 Chr25:4; 35:12; for the third, seeJosh.8:31; 23:6; 2 Kgs 14:6; Neh 8:1. These expres­sions presumably arise under the influence of the Book of Deuteronomy. It is inthe Book of Deuteronomy that the word "Torah' first refers to something morethan the discrete "torah" or teaching on a specific subject or of a specific group,presumably now to the Book of Deuteronomy (or some antecedent) as a whole. SeeDeut 1:5; 4:8, 44; 17:18, 19; 27:3, 8, 26; 28:58, 61; 29:20,28; 30:10; 31:9, 11, 12,24, 26; 32:46; 33:4. Of these, the following stress the written nature of the Torahin a book (scroll): Deut 17:18; 28:58,61; 29:20; 30:10; 31:9,24-,26. On the devel­oping nature of the conception of Torah within the Hebrew Bible see: MordechaiCogan, "On the Borderline between Biblical Criticism and Hebrew Linguistics: TheEmergence of the Term :100 ;£>0," in Tehillah le-Moshe: Biblical andJudaic Studies inHonor cif MosM Greenberg (ed, Nt. Cogan, B. L. EicWer, and J. H. Tigay; \VinonaLake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 37*-43* [Hebrew]; :NIichacl Fishbane, "i1iin" inn'~ipo il"iDi?P'~J~ (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1982), 8:469-83; Moshe Greenberg,"Three Conceptions of the Torah in Hebrew Scriptures," in Die Hebrdische Bibel undihre noeifache Nadzgeschichte: Festschrift flir Rolf RendwrfJ eum 65. Gebutstag (ed. E. Blumet al.; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1990), 365-78; repro in Studies in the Bibleand Jewish 71wught (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1995), 11-24; JamesL. Kugel, "Rise of Scripture," in J. L. Kugel and R. A. Greer, Early BiblicalInterpretation (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), 13-26; Barnabas Lindars, "Torah inDeuteronomy," in J¥ords and lvfeanings (ed. P. Ackroyd and B. Lindars; Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1968), 117-36; Hindy Najman, "Torah of Moses:Reading Interpretation and Authority," in "Authoritative Writing and Interpretation:A Study in the History of Scripture" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1998), 75-118;Jacob Neusner, "From Scroll to Symbol: The Meaning of the \Vord Torah," inFormative Judaism: Religious., Historical, and literary Studies: Third Series: Torah, Pharisees,and Rabbis (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983), 35-57. Note the brilliant way inwhich Philo of Alexandria cuts through these questions by unambiguously positingMoses as the writer of the Pentateuch, after having had his purified soul "engraved,"like the tablets of the 'Ten Commandments, by the divine logos at Sinai. For anexcellent account of Philo in this regard, see David Dawson, Allegorical Readers andCultural Recision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992),110-12. See also below, n. 43. 1\10st recently, see Najman, "The Divine Moses andHis Natural Law: Philo 011 Authority and Interpretation," in "Authoritative Writing,"179--231. In the Dead Sea Scrolls: for the "Torah of Moses," see lQS V, 8; VIII,22; CD XV, 2-9, 12; XVI, 2, 5; 4Q266 (4QDa) II 6; for "commanded by thehand of Moses," see lQS VIII, 15; lQNI X, 6; lQ1-I XVII, 12; 4Q504.(4QDibHama

)

V, 14; for "by the hand of Moses and the prophets," see lQS I, 3; CD V, 21; forthe "Book of Moses," see 4Q174 (4QFlor) 1 I, 2; 4~\1MT C 10, 17, 21; 4Q2471 verso; for "Moses said," sec CD V, 8; VIII,. 14 (= XIX, 26). For the NewTestament, sec below, n. 45. .

402 STEVEN D. FRAADE

interpretation, already inner-biblically, but more ambitiously post­biblically. As we shall see, the nature of Moses' intermediary role"vas of significance to post-biblical interpreters not just for their under­standing of Scripture, but also for their self-understanding as scrip­tural interpreters.

II. THE MEKILTAS

Although the question of Moses' intermediary role in. revelation comesup frequently, albeit often only implicitly, in post-biblical literatureof Second Temple and early rabbinic times," I wish to focus hereon a parallel pair of early midrashic texts that comment on onelocus of this larger. question and which have not received the atten­tion they deserve, in part because they have been previously mis­understood and mistranslated. The passages, from the two Mekiltas,comment on Exod 19:9a in a section describing Moses' shuttle diplo­macy in preparing the people for the revelation: "And the LORD saidto Moses, 'I will come .to you in a thick cloud, .in order that thepeople may hear when 1 speak with you and so trust you ever after' "(NJPS). This verse appears immediately after Moses conveys to thepeople "all that the LORD had commanded him" (19:7), the peopleunanimously respond, "All that the LORD has spoken we will do!"(19:8a), and Moses relays the people's words back to God (19:8b).Exod 19:9b would appear to reiterate 19:8b: "Then Moses reportedthe people's words to the LORD." Thus, it might be midrashicallyassumed that Exod 19:9a refers to yet another communication, notexplicitly quoted in the biblical text as we have it, supplementary tothe preceding exchange, that results in the people's trust in Mosesfor ever after," 'Vhat specifically did God say to Moses in the peo­ple's hearing that would elicit not only their assent but their con­tinuous confidence in a human intermediary?

8 For Philo and the Temple Scroll, see above, nn. 4, 5, 7. Similarly worth con­sideringin this context is the Book of Jubilees, in which it is emphasized that Moses,while on Mt, Sinai, writes what is dictated to him by an angelic intermediary fromheavenly tablets. See Hindy Najman, "Interpretation as Primordial Writing: Jubilecsand its Authority Conferring Strategies," ..7SJ 30 (1999): 379-410. For aspects ofthis issue in other early rabbinic texts, see my earlier publications cited in n. 1.

9 Similarly, the Mekilta to Exod 19:9b presents multiple other views of what this"missing" communication might have been. Of course, modem critical Bible schol-

MOSES AND THE COMMANDMENTS

Mekilta ofR. Ishmael Bahodeslt 2 (henceforth, MRI): lO

403

"In order that the people may hear when I speak with you": R. Judah[bar Ilai] says: From whence can you say that the Holy One, blessedbe he, said to Moses, "Behold, I will say something to you, and youwill challenge me ('ji'rno), and I will accede (il."O) to you, in orderthat Israel will say, 'Great is Moses, for God acceded to him'?" As itis said, "And also trust in you for ever." I I Rabbi [Judah the Patriarch]

arship, not sharing these midrashic assumptions, must interpret the seeming dis­junctiveness of Exod 19:9 in literary terms, whether compositional or redactional.Thus, Nahum Sarna explains 19b as follows: "This phrase refers not to the imme­diate antecedent but to the quote in verse 8. It is an instance of resumptive repe­tition, a literary device in which the text, following a digression, reconnects withan earlier text" (J:t..xodus UPS Torah Commentary; .Philadelphia: je\vish PublicationSociety, 1991], 105). Similarly, U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus(jerusalem: Magnes, 1982), 157-58 [Hebrew]. For more on such repetitive resump­tion (or Wiederaufnahme, as it is commonly termed) in biblical narrative, see Bernard~1. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics ofLega! Innovation (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1997), 17-20; Shemaryahu Talmon, 'The Presentation of Synchroneityand Simultaneity in Biblical Narrative," in Studies ill Hebrew Narrative Art Throughoutthe Ages (ed. j. Heinemann and S. 'Verses; ScrHier 27; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1978),9-26. On the literary structure of the Sinaitic narrative more generally, see BaruchJ. Schwartz, "The Priestly Account of the Theophany and Lawgiving at Sinai," inTexts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran (ed. IvI. "\7. Fox et al.;Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 103-34; Benjamin D. Sommer, "Revelationat Sinai in the Hebrew Bible and in jewish Theology," JR 79 (1999): 422-51; ArieToeg, lAwgiving at Sinai: The Course ofDeoelopment qf the Traditions Bearing on theLawgivingat Sinai witkin thePentateuch, uith a Special Emphasis on theEmergence qf theliterary Complexin Exodus xix-xxiv (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1977 [Hebrew]).

10 Lauterbach ed., 2:207-8; Horovitz-Rabin ed., 210. Except where noted, man­uscript variations are inconsequential to the meaning. The translation that followsis my own.

11 'This prooftext, but not "from whence can you say," is absent in the best tex­tual witnesses, MSS Oxford, Munich, Vatican 299, and the first printing (Constan­tinople, 1515), butincluded in modem critical editions, which rely here on the lateMidrasb H.akhamim. Tal. Shimcolli omits "as it is said" but has the prooftext. The par­allel in l\fRSBY (below) has neither "from whence can you say" nor the prooftext.A later reiteration of R. judah's statement in ~1RI (see below, n. 21), has "fromwhence can you say," but no prooftext according to all the witnesses, including aCairo Geniza fragment (1\1S St. Petersburg Antonin 957). Thus, on text-criticalgrounds; it is most likely that the prooftext was not original to the Mekilta. Thequestion "from whence can you say" without a concluding prooftext is anomalous.Perhaps the text once read "from here" (t~:Jo, but written as 1:;0), which couldeasily have been mistaken by a scribe for "tl-om whence" <rJO), which subsequentlyrequired the addition of a prooftext. Alternatively, and I think preferably, the fol­lowing interpretation attributed to Rabbi [judah the Patriarch] (through the cita­tion of Exod 19:20) may not be original to our text, but an insertion made at alater stage of editing. lor this possibility, evidenced elsewhere, see Menahem Kahana,"'1\1arginal Annotations' of the School of Rabbi in the Halachic Midrashim" inStudies in the Bible and Talmud: Papers Delivered at the Departmental Symposia in Honour of

404 STEVEN D. FRAADE

says: We need not make Moses great, if: in order to do so, we causethe Holy One, blessed be he, to reverse himself and his word (irn~

'...,::1i::1i '::1).12 Rather, this teaches that God said to Moses, "Behold, Iwill call to you from the top of the mountain and you will ascend,"as it is said, "And the LORD called Moses to the top of the Mountainand Moses went up" (Exod 19:20). "And also trust in you forever":Also in you, also in the prophets who will in the future arise after you.

Mekilta ofR. Shimon har Tohai 19:9 (henceforth, l\1RSBY):13

"In order that the people may hear when I speak with you": RabbiJudah [bar TIai] says: The Holy One, blessed be he, said to Moses,"Behold I will say something to you and you will challenge me ('J:::l"\DO),and behold I will retract (inn) and accede (ii1'O) to your words." Rabbi[Judah the Patriarch] says: It "vas not because of the honor of Mosesthat God acceded to his words, rather this is what he said to him:"The commandments which I gave to you at Marah, behold I willagain teach G1J1\D, inn) them to you here [at Sinai]." It does not say,"which the LORD commanded," but, "which the LoRD commandedhim" (Exod 19:7). This teaches that one who hears from your [Moses']mouth is as one who hears from the mouth of the Holy One, andnot [just] from your mouth, but from the mouth of elders who in thefuture will come after you and from the mouth of the prophets.Therefore it is said, "And also trust in you for ever."

the Sixtieth Anniversary ofthe Institute ofJewish Studies (ed. S. Japhet; Jerusalem: HebrewUniversity, Institute of Jewish Studies, 1987), 69-86 [Hebrew]. If so, then in theoriginal version of the text, the subsequent citation of Exod 19:9b would have beenthe direct answer to "from whence can you say," before being commented uponitself: Its not being preceded by "as it is said" is not a problem since this word isoften absent in the best witnesses to tannaitic midrashim. The version in 1\.1RSBY(below) and the later attestations of ~lRI would be based on the later editing ofMRI but would have smoothed out the text by either removing "from whence canyou say" (MRSBY) or adding a prooftext before Rabbi's statement (later attesta­tions of MRI). Notwithstanding this possibility, I treat Rabbi's statement as part of~fRI and 1\1RSBY (except :NIRSBY Exod 9:23, where it is lacking) as it appearsin all of our extant witnesses.

12 This is the reading in :NIS Oxford and the first printing (Constantinople, 15I 5),adopted by Lauterbach. Horovitz-Rabin has 1il:3'1: 1:3 irnW, which is the readingin rat. Shimconi. MS Munich, has '''i:3,:3' 1:J imiDo In any case, the meaning is thesame: God changed his mind and retracted his previous words.

13 Epstein-Melamed ed., 140. The translation that follows is my own. On therelation between 1\1RI and MRSBY, especially with regard to their narrative exege­ses, see Menahern I. Kahana, The Two Mekhiltot on theAmelek Portion: The Originalib'ofthe l-''ersiotl of the Mekhilt.a d'Rabbi Ishmael with Respect to the lvlekhilta qf Rabbi Shim'onben Yohq.y (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999), 15-32 [Hebrew]. Kahana demonstrates theoverall dependency of l\fRSBY on MRI.

MOSES AND THE COMl\fANDMENTS 405

Although there are significant differences of wording and substancebetween these two texts, in both, the interpretation of R. Judah barIlai (ca. 150 c.s.) is stunning. According to him, God stages a rab­binic-style halakhic dispute with Moses in the hearing of the wholepeople, in which Moses challenges God's articulation (whether out­rightly refuting or sirnply correcting is not clear), whereupon Godretracts and accepts instead Moses' alternative formulation." Othershave rendered Rabbi Judah b. Ilai's interpretation more weakly, butthe wording of R. Judah b. Ilai's representation of the dialogue in1vIRSBY (1'i:3,?n,,01 inn. "j'in), and the force of R. Judah thePatriarch's objection in both texts and his wording according to ~ffiI

('i:3':31 ,::1 irntD), make the stronger reading inevitable: in responseto Moses' objection, God immediately retracts his original formula­tion and accepts Moses' alternative." All of this is done in Israel'shearing so that they will, in the future and jor all time (C?ij]?), haveconfidence in Moses as the divinely authorized transmitter of the

H For the verb irn (especially -:3 lin) denoting a sage's retracting of his halakhicopinion in favor of another, see, for example m. Hor. 1:2: l.V~ iJi'''' T n':! rrnji1:J 'im1: "If a court gave a decision, which they [later] realized was wrong, andthey retracted...." See also m. CEd. 1:12, 13, 14; 5:6, 7. The force of the Itiphci! of,in in this context would be, literally, to cause to retract, or, as I have translated,to challenge. Similarly, the use of hiph'il form ili10 to denote acceding to another'shalakhic opinion is common in rabbinic legal disputes. See, for example, m. 'Ed.2:6, 8; 3:9; 4:2, 6; 5:1, 4. For this understanding of 1\1RI, see the commentaryMerkevet lIammishneh (R. Moses David Ashkenazi; Lvov, 1895} ad loc., who relatesR. Judah b. Ilai's interpretation to the view of R. Jose in b. Sabb, 87a, that Mosesadded on his own an extra day to the two days commanded by God for the mento separate from their wives in preparation for the revelation at Sinai (on whichsee below, n.31). Whatever the imagined content of their exchange, my point isthat the language employed by the Mekilta is intended to represent a halakhic dis­pute and not simply a one-time disagreement over what needed to be done inpreparation for the revelation. This is further supported by the interpretation ofExod 19:7 in MRSBY as referring to commandments in general, which may beread as a continuation of R. Judah b. Ilai's interpretation after R. Judah thePatriarch's interruption (see above, n. II). For the broader motif of the praisewor­thiness of God's acceding to human objections, see MRI Bahodesli 9 (Lauterbached., 2:271; Horovitz-Rabin ed., 237); Sifre Deut. 176 (Finkelstein ed., 221); Sifre Num.134 (Horovitz ed., 177-78); .Midr. Tanna'im Deut. 18:17 (Hoffmann ed., 111); 'AbotR. Nat. A37, B40 (Schechter ed., 112).

15 Compare Lauterbach's translation of l\fRI (2:207-8), "I will be saying some­thing and you shall answer Me, and I will then agree with you"; and a recenttranslation of MRSBY as cited in S. Y. Agnon's ''Atem Re'item: "I will say some­thing to you, you will answer Me, then I will acknowledge your answer" (Present atSinai: The Giving of the lAW. Commentaries selected ~'V S. r Agnon [trans. M. Swirsky;Philadelphia: je\vish Publication Society, 1994J, 125). These make it sound as though

406 STEVEN D. FRAADE

commandments, not simply as unthinking stenographer, but, as itwere, as contributor to revelation, with advance divine approval. Inexegetical terms, R. Judah b. Ilai understands Exod 19:9a to meanthat what was communicated between God and Moses in the pub­lic hearing must have had an effect on the people's trust that wouldtranscend the present moment.

In both Mekiltas, R. Judah b. Ilai's interpretation is too audaciousfor R. Judah the Patriarch (ca. 200 C.E.), who according to IvIRIobjects to building up Moses at God's expense." However, the twotexts attribute entirely different alternative interpretations to R. Judahthe Patriarch and yet another one elsewhere in MRI (see below),According to MRI, Rabbi Judah the Patriarch understands Exod19:9 to refer to the people's hearing of God's calling Moses to ascendthe mountain. They thereby will know that when Moses disappearsinto the cloud at the top of. the mountain he will be in direct com­munication with God, even though they will not be able to witnessit directly." According to IvIRSBY, RabbiJudah the Patriarch arguesthat what the people hear is God's repeating to Moses of the pre­sinaitic commandments previously issued at Marah, but which nowneed to be repeated in the presence of all the people in order tobe formally included in the Sinaitic covenant. 18

Both MRI and 11RSBY end by interpreting Exod 19:9b to refernot only to the people's trust in Moses, but also to their trust in hissuccessor prophets (MRI) or elders and prophets (MRSBY). This isbased on the interpretation of the unnecessary Hebrew word lJj

God is testing Moses for his correct understanding of what God had previouslysaid, rather than Moses' questioning of the correctness of God's previous words.See previous note. Louis Ginzberg, in condensing and paraphrasing MRSBY, leavesR. Judah b. .Ilai's interpretation out entirely and gives R. Judah the Patriarch's(unattributed) interpretation alone (not as a rebuttal): "God hereupon said to Moses:'1 will come to thee in a thick cloud and repeat to thee the commandments thatI gave thee on Marah, so that what thou tellest them may seem as important aswhat they hear from Me. But not only in thee shall they have faith, but also inthe prophets and sages that will come after thee" (Legends of the ,Jews [trans.P. Radin and H. Szold; 7 vols.; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1968],3:87).

Hi For the possibility of R. Judah the Patriarch's statement being an insertionhere, see above, 11. II.

Ii Midrasli Leqa1} Tob (Buber ed., 64b) and Midrasli Sekel Tob (Buber ed., 340) give"this interpretation alone, unattributed, for Exod 19:9.

18 For the giving of commandments to Israel at Marah, see also the view attrib­uted to Rabbi (Judah the Patriarch) in MRI Bahodei 3 (Lauterbached., 2:211;Horovitz-Rabin ed., 211). Sec also "h. Sank. 56b (haraita); Ginzberg, Legends, 3:39-40,47;6:15 (n. 83), 18-19 (n. 129).

MOSES AND THE COMMANDMENTS 407

("also") as a term of inclusion (ribbui).19 ~1RSBY derives this as wellfrom the preceding words of Exod 19:7, where the pronominal suffixof "commanded him" ('ri'~) is, strictly speaking, redundant. Rather,it comes to specify that Moses communicates to the elders (and theyto the people) what was commanded to him directly by God. Theelders and prophets stand in relation to Moses as Moses stands inrelation to God, and those who receive commandments from theelders and prophets should regard them as if received from the mouthof God. The order of elders and prophets in lVIRSBY is reminis­cent of their identical order in the "chain of tradition" of m. >Abot1:1, and is thereby suggestive of the full line of Mosaic descendentsin that chain down to and including the rabbinic sages of the Mekiltas'textual community."

Both MRI and l\1RSBY cite R. Judah b. Ilai's interpretation againin their commentaries to Exod19:23, but in lVIRI with yet anothercontrary interpretation attributed to R. Judah the Patriarch." InExod 19:21, God tells Moses to go down to warn the people not tobreak through to the mountain. But in 19:23, Moses reminds Godthat he had previously warned the people not to approach the moun­tain, in accord with God's previous instruction to him in 19:12,therefore making God's latest instruction unnecessary. MRI inter­prets 19:23 so as to have Moses say, "I have already warned them

19 The word O'?D? ("forever") might also have suggested Moses' successors. Theexplicit repetition of the word OJ in MRI makes clear that it is the primary basic;of the inclusive interpretation.

20 According to m. 'Abot, second temple and rabbinic links in that chain bothtransmit and contribute to the words of Torah they receive. Compare Sifre Deut.41 to Deut 11:13 (Finkelstein ed., 86), where biblical elders are similarly authoriz­ing antecedents to rabbinic sages, treated by me in From Tradition to Commentary,79-83, 234-36 nn. 33-47; as well as the partial parallel in t. Sotak 7:9-12. On theassociation of biblical elders with rabbinic sages, see From Tradition to .Commentary,75-79, 233-34 nne 27-31. Note that Mk.I Bahodesli 2 (Lauterbach ed., 2:206;Horovitz-Rabin cd., 209) interprets Exod 19:7 ("and Moses came and summonedthe elders of the people") to mean: "This teaches that Moses shared his glory (status)With the elders." Tgs. Genira, Fragment, .lV'eojiti and Samaritan to Exod 19:7 all have"sages" (c'o::>n) for "elders."

21 MRI Bahodesn 4 (Lauterbach ed., 2:226; Horovitz-Rabin ed., 217-18); MRSBY19:23 (Epstein-Melamed ed., 145). However, note that in ~IRI MS Oxford, "anotherinterpretation" (abbreviated, ~"j) appears in place of "Rabbi says." However, thismay simply be a scribal error for "Rabbi says" (abbreviated, ~"..,), as is evidencedelsewhere. See Kahana, "'Marginal Annotations,'" 81. Note that ?vIS Vatican 299and a Cairo Geniza fragment (St. Petersburg Antonin 957) have 'D'~ 'i.

408 STEVEN D. FRAADE

and set boundaries for them." To this God responds abruptly, "Go,descend" (19:24), which l\1RI interprets as, "You have spoken well,"meaning that Moses was right in telling God that there was no needto warn the people again. We are next told that this is the sort ofexchange to which R. Judah b. Ilai referred previously. It is clearfrom this that l\1RI understands R. Judah b. Ilai's interpretation torefer, as I previously argued, to Moses' challenging of God's instruc­tion and to God's acceding to Moses' objection.F

Once again, according to Mk.I, R. Judah the Patriarch objects toR. Judah b. Ilai's elevating of Moses at God's expense, arguinginstead that it was necessary for God to repeat his warning: "Oneshould warn a person at the time of instruction and warn him atthe time of execution." l\1RSBY omits here any mention of R. Judahthe Patriarch's objection to R. Judah b. Ilai's interpretation, Thus,in three places R. Judah the Patriarch denies the possibility of a dis­pute, even if staged, between God and Moses in the context ofSinaitic revelation and interprets the biblical grounds for such a dis­pute in ways that affirm Moses' role as passive recipient and trans­mitter of God's words/commandments.

Did Moses as prophetic lawgiver play an intellectually active andindependent role in the transmission of the commandments or washe rather a passive transmitter to Israel of the divine commandmentscommunicated to him? The Mekiltas never resolve the differencesof interpretation between the two R. Judahs, setting them, rather,alongside one another without favoring outrightly either (with theexception of l\1RSBY to Exod 19:23). R. Judah b. llai's interpreta­tion has the advantage of remaining constant and generalizable,whereas R. Judah the Patriarch's objections and three alternativeinterpretations are tailored to each scriptural application. Nevertheless,the views of the t\VO R. Judahs remain in dialectical suspension withinour present texts." The scene of Moses and God engaged in dis-

22 See above, nn. 14, 15. For the same understanding, see the commentary ZqyitRdanan to Yale Shimconi Titro 285 (n. 49).

23 Compare David Weiss Halivni's sketching of maximalist and nonmaximalistrabbinic views of how much of Torah was direct!y revealed at Sinai: Peshat & Derash:Plain and Applied Meaning in Rabbinic Exegesis (New York: Oxford University Press,1991), 112-19. If my suggestion (see above, n. 11) that R. Judah the Patriarch'sview is an editorial insertion to the Mekilta is correct, then this dialectical suspen­sion would be the product of a secondary level of editorial construction.

MOSES AND THE COMMANDMENTS 409

pute is mirrored in, and thereby lends authority to, the narrativeframe of the interpretive dispute between the two R. Judahs, two ofthe most distinguished successors in the revelatory chain of traditionextending back through the prophets and elders to Moses. However,there is one crucial difference: whereas, according to R. Judah b.Ilai, God quickly retracts and accedes to Moses' correction, accord­ing to the final framers of the Mekiltas, the rabbinic dispute remainsopen-ended.

III. RELATED TANNAITIC TEXTS

R. Judah the Patriarch would presumably not have been the onlyearly sage to take issue with the strong interpretation of R. Judahb. Ilai, In fact, it runs counter to a frequent theme in early rabbinictexts, which asserts the faithful and absolute accuracy with whichMoses transmitted and recorded God's commands. For example, else­where in the Mekilta's commentary to the giving of the Torah atSinai it makes this very point:

"Thus (iT::J) shall 'you say" (Exod 19:3): "Thus," in the holy language;"thus," in this order; "thus," in this manner; "thus," that you shouldnot subtract and not add."

"These are the words" (Exod 19:6): That you should not subtractand not add. "That you shall speak to the children of Israel": In thisorder ... "All these words" (19:7): The first, first and the last, last.25

Similarly, in commenting on Exod 19:15, where Moses instructs thepeople (men) to separate from the women in preparation for thetheophany, an instruction which is not explicitly given to him byGod, the Mekilta raises the possibility that perhaps Moses added toGod's command. As MRSBY rhetorically asks, "Is it possible that

24 MRI Bahodesn 2 (Lauterbach ed., 2:201; Horovitz-Rabin cd., 206, with notefor parallels). The same is found, in even more detail, in 1\1.RSBY ad loco (Epstein­Melamed ed., 138). That the Torah is not to be altered by addition or subtractionderives from Deut 4:2; 13:1 (12:32 LXX). Josephus frequently denies having doneso (although he does plenty of both): Ant. 1.17; 2.234; 4.196-198; 10.218; 20.261;CL Ant. 9.242; 12.109; 14.2-3; C. Ap. 1.42. For discussion of this topos, see FlaoiusJosephus: Translation and Commentary. Volume 3: Judean Antiquities 1-4 (trans. and com­mentary by L. Feldman; ed, S. Mason; Lcidcn: Brill, 2000), 7-8. Compare Philo,Spec. 4.143; uta Am. 311.

25 1vfRI Bahodeslt 2 (Lauterbach ed., 2:206; Horovitz-Rabin ed., 209). Similarly,in even more detail, in MRSBY ad loco (Epstein-Melamed ed., 139, 140).

410 STEVEN D. FRAADE

Moses said this on his own (10~1' 'E)O)?" Rather, according to bothMekiltas, Moses correctly inferred from God's words, "Let them beready for the third day" (19:11), that separation from wives is intended.Moses added nothing that could not have been inferred from God'sO\\1n words." The tannaitic midrashim, especially to Deuteronomy,frequently attribute to Moses the following assurance to the people:"I do not say this to you of my own ("o~j]o), but from the mouthof the Holy One I say this to you.?"

This possibility, that Moses might have altered or added to thecommandments in transmitting them to the people, is strikingly raisedand rejected in two other tannaitic midrashim:

"And I besought the LORD at that time, saying" (Deut 3:23): ... Mosessaid to the Holy One, blessed be he: "Master of the universe, let anytransgression that I have committed be recorded against me, so thatpeople will not say, 'Moses seems to have falsified (:']"r) the Torah,'or 'said something that had not been [divinely] commanded.' "28

"For he has spurned the word of the LORD" (Num 15:31): ... Onewho says, "All of the Torah I accept as binding except for this thing/commandment," is what is meant by "for he has spumed the wordof the LORD." One who says, "All of the torah is from the mouth ofthe Holy One, but this thing/commandment Moses said on his own(;O~D '£)0)," is what is meant by "for he has spurned the word of theLoRD."29

26 ~fRI Bahodesl: 3 (Lauterbach ed., 2:216-17; Horovitz-Rabin ed., 213-14);MRSBY '19:15 (Epstein-Melamed ed., 142). Note as well SifteNum. 103 (Horowitzed., 101), where Moses' own separation from his wife is said to have been at God'sexpress command, whereas in later sources this is said to have been at Moses' own(commendable) initiative. Cf. Tg. Ps.-Jon.. Num 12:8; Rashi Num 12:8. Cf. below,n.32.

2i Sifra Shemini pereq 1:8 (Weiss ed., 47a); Sifre Deut. 5, 9, 19, 25 (Finkelsteined.,13, 16, 31, 35); Midr. Tanna'im Deut 1:6; 1:9; 1:20; 1:29 (Hoffmann ed., 5, 6, 11,12). This is particularly apt for the Book of Deuteronomy since it might appear tocontain Moses' own commandments to the people. See Finkelstein ed., 13, note adloco See above, n. 4.

28 Sifre Deut. 26 (Finkelstein ed., 36). For treatment of this passage in its largertextual context, see my article, "Sifre Deuteronomy 26 (ad Deut 3:23): How Consciousthe Composition?" BUCA 54 (1983): 245-301. Note the parallel in the NIekilta toDeuteronomy (ed. 1\1. Kahana, Tarbi; 54 [1985]: 518).

~J Sifte Num. 112 (Horovitz ed., 121). l\ similar baraita is given in h. Sank 99a,but extends the argument to one who says' all of the Torah is from heaven, exceptfor particular rules derived from Scripture by rabbinic hermeneutical rules. Forother rabbinic texts that show an awareness of critiques of Moses' trustworthiness,see Sifre Deut. 5, 102 (Finkelstein ed., 13, 161); b.,Hul. 60b. See also Josephus, C.Ap. 2.25, 145, 161-162, with remarks of Louis H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in theAncient World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 142.

MOSES AND THE COM~IANDMENTS 411

While these two passages strongly deny and condemn the view thatMoses either falsified or fabricated commandments on his OvVIl, itwould appear they do so in polemical recognition of those who madesuch claims. \Vho such people might have been, and how the pre­viously examined tradition of R. Judah b. Ilai might have related tothem, is a subject to which I will return in due course.

IV. MOSES TAKES THE HALAKHIC LEAn (wrm GOD'S APPROVAL)

Later rabbinic texts specify and celebrate specific acts or rules initi­ated by Moses on his own, but to which God immediately agrees.These begin with a baraita appearing twice in the Babylonian Talmud:"It is taught: Moses did three things of his own mind ('lnl'iO) andthe Holy One, blessed be he, agreed with him: He added a day ofhis own mind, he separated from his wife, and he broke the tablets.T"The gemara next explains Moses' own exegetical reasoning for eachof the things he did, usually by applying a hermeneutical rule oflogic to one or more scriptural verses of divine command in orderto derive a new understanding. Space only allows me here tosummarize each of these, without going into the various exegeticalarguments:

(1) In Exod 19:10 God tells Moses to have the people purify them­selves "today and tomorrow" in preparation for the theophany,while in 19:15 Moses "adds a day," telling them to "be readyfor the third day," to which God accedes in 19:11, thereforenot allowing his shekhinah to descend to their midst until afterthree days."

(2) Although the Israelites were told to return to conjugal relationsafter completion of the revelation (Deut 5:27), Moses applies anafortiori argument to himself, whereby he concludes that he mustcontinue to remain separate from his wife ever hence, to whichGod accedes (Deut 5:28).32

30 I translate from h. Sabh. 87a. Similarly in h. Tebam. 62a, but with differencesin wording and order. Note in particular the latter's: t:npCil n.!ii? 1nJii C'::>Oili, "andhis mind agreed with the mind of God."

31 See h. Sabb, 87a (baraita); b. Yebam. 62a (baraita); 'Abot R...Nat. A2, B2; Pirqe R.EI. 41; ni.In:l\llil In? ~nin ~np"OO(in Jdlinek, Bet ha-Midrash, 6:41).

32 See h. Sabb. 87a (haraita); h. Yebam. 62a (haraita); Exodc Rab. 19:3 (but note

412 STEVEN D. FRAADE

(3) Upon witnessing Israel's apostasy with the Golden Calf, Mosesapplies another a fortiori argument that leads him to break thefirst set of tablets with the Ten Commandments, even thoughnot told to do so by God. But God approves of his act afterthe fact (Exod 34:1).33

Later midrashic collections add other Mosaic initiatives to this list,variously grouping them:

(4) Moses applies hermeneutical logic to conclude that he shouldnot enter the Tent of Meeting until called upon to do so byGod, to which God agrees (Lev 1:1).34

(5) Following the Golden Calf incident, Moses convinces God toaddress Israel as "I am the LORD your (pI.) God," instead of "Iam the LORD your (sing.) God" as in the Decalogue (Exod 20:2),so that they would know that he was addressing all of them andnot just Moses. Here (as in other such cases), God says to Moses:"You have taught me" (":Jn1o,?).35

(6) Whereas God, in listing his attributes of mercy, holds childrenculpable for the sins of their parents (Exod 34:7), Moses con­vinces God that this is unfair, causing him to revoke his ownwords and to establish Moses' in their place (Deut 24:16; 2 Kgs14:6).36

(7) Although God commanded Moses to conquer Sihon the Amoritestraight away (Deut 2:24-25), Moses instead sent messengerswith an offer of peace (Deut 2:26; Num 21:21-22), contrary toGod's instructions. However, Moses "vas able to convince Godthat seeking peace was a primordial value consistent with the

contrary views that God commanded him to do so; cf. above, n. 26); ,Abot R. Nat.A2 (with contrary views), B2; Pirqe R. El. 46 (according to God's command). OnMoses' abstinence from sexual relations with his wife, see also Sifi-c Num. 99 (Horovitzed., 98). For further textual discussion, see Menahem Kister, Studies in Allotde-RabbiNathan: Text, Redaction and Interpretation (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Departmentof Talmud; Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, Institute for Research of Eretz Israel, 1998), 183.

33 See b. Sabb. 87a (haraita); b. Tebam. 62a (haraita); Exod. Rab. 19:3; 46:3; Deut.Rab. 5:13; 'Abot R. Nat. A2 (with contrary view that God commanded), B2; Tanl;.Slwfltim 19.

34 ,'Abot R. Nat. A2, B2; E-r;od. Rah. 19:3; 46:3; but cf. SijraAchare Mot parashali 1:6(\tVeiss ed., BOa), according to which Moses is not limited from access to the 'rentof Meeting,

ss Sec .Hum. Rab. 19:33.36 Sec Num. Rob. 19:33; Tanh. Shofetim 19.

MOSES AND THE COMl\fANDMENTS 413

teachings of the Torah, causing God to institute Moses' prac­tice as the law for all wars (Deut 20:10).37

All of these Mosaic innovations are generated by a seeming gap orinconsistency in the biblical text. They all have Moses applying rab­binic hermeneutical rules and reasoning to scriptural/divine wordsso as to determine his action independently ('O~DO, 1nD'O) of, oreven in contradiction to, a previously articulated divine command.In each case, Moses convinces God of the correctness of his action,in some cases leading to new or changed divine imperatives. How­ever, it should be noted that in some of the later texts, we hearminority rabbinic counter-voices arguing that what might appear asMoses' independent action or ruling is already implicit in God's com­mand; that is, what might appear to be a Mosaic innovation is inactuality not.

v. KORAH'S REBELLION

In contrast to the preceding traditions, other midrashim emphasizethat Korah's chief complaint against Moses, for which he was killed,was that Moses had instituted commandments on his 0\\'11, withoutdivine authorization. This is occasioned by the ambiguous scripturalexpression "And Korah took" (Num 16:1) as an expression of Korah'srebellion," immediately following God's command to Moses to instructthe Israelites to make fringes on the corners of their garments, eachwith a blue cord (15:37-38). In response to Korah and his follow­ers, Moses states that if the rebels die an unusual death, "by thisyou shall know that it was the LORD who sent me to do all thesethings; that they are not of my own devising (':J?o)," but if not, "itwas not the LORD who sent me" (16:28-29).

37 See Num. Rab. 19:33; Deut. Rab. 5: 13 (Lieberman ed., 29-30); Tanh. Huqqat 22(Buber ed.); Tanh. Deoanm supp. 10 (Huber ed.); Tanh. Huqqat 51 (Huber ed.); Tanh.Tzao 5 (Buber ed.). For an excellent analysis, see Arlie! Schremer, nipiDit n':WiE)j1""(lOOii1 'ii ,rD 'n'''j:JiT"C'~'' "'P"'" (vi'''£» nfDi'E)01 il..,'pDii,,?in Renewing JewishCommitment: The Work and Thought of David Hartman (cd. A Sagi and Z. Zohar; 2vols.; Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad & The Shalom Hartman Institute, 2001),2:759-63.

38 Expressed in all of the targumim ad loc., including Tg. Onqelos ad loc.; )"~£)n~inip.

414 STEVEN D. FRAADE

From these verses, rabbinic midrashim weave a rich set of nar­ratives of how Korah (in some versions at his wife's urging) chal­lenges Moses' commandment of the fringes, arguing the illogic ofthe commandrnent, that it was Moses' own invention, that Moseswas not a prophet, and that the Torah was not from heaven. Thus,whereas the central theme of the biblical narrative is Korah's jeal­ousy of Moses' and Aaron's holy, supreme position among the peo­ple, the midrashic tradition turns Korah into a heretical epikorsi(Epicurean) who challenges Moses' prophetic status and the divineorigins of the commandments communicated and recorded by him.As one midrashic tradition has Korah say to Moses: "You were notcommanded regarding these matters, but you invented them of yourown design (1:1"0)."39 Or, "From his heart and of himself (1:1?0'C~DO') Moses said all of these things/commandments.Y" Accordingto another version of the midrash, Korah and his band said:

\Vhen the Ten Commandments were given to us, each and every oneof us was nursed from Mt, Sinai, but we were only given the TenCommandments, and we did not hear there about [Iaws of] hallah,nor of priestly offerings, nor of tithes, nor of fringes. Rather, you saidthese on your own (lO~.tJc) in order to give authority to yourself andhonor to Aaron your brother."

39 Num. Rab. 18:3; Tanh, Koral}, 2; Tanh. Koral.t 4 (Buber ed.), These interpreta­tions clearly play on ":J~O of Num 16:28, taking the ambiguous "these things" torefer not simply to Moses' actions as commander in chief in the present crisis, butmore broadly to his central role in the communication of the divine command­ments.

-10 Num. Rab. 18:12; TanIJ,. J(ora/.z 22 (Buber ed.).-.1 1""a1. Shimconi Kora/.l 752 (relammedenu). For other sources not mentioned in the

preceding notes, see: Tg. Ps.-J., Frg. Tg. Num 16:1, 28;y. Sank. 10(17):1 (27d-28a);h. Sanh. llOa; Tanl},. KoraJ.t 5 (Buber ed.); Tanh. Koral], supp. 1, 2 (Buber ed.); "Ag.Esth. 28a (Buber ed.); Midr. Prov. II; Midr.Haggadol Num 16:1; Leqai: Tob Num16:1; Chron. Jeralpneel 55:5 (trans. Gaster, 161). For a fuller treatment of rabbinicinterpretations of Korah's rebellion, see Moshe Beer, "Korah's Revolt-Its Motivesin the Aggadah," in Studies in Aggadah, Targum and]&uh lilurgy in Memory ofJosephHeinemann (ed. J. J. Petuchowski and E. Fleischer; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1981), 9*-33*[Hebrew]. These rabbinic understandings of Korah's rebellion find no direct men­tion in tannaitic midrashim. However, Philo already interprets the biblical episodeas a challenge to the divine origins of the commandments, specifically that "therewere spiteful rumours that he [Moses] had falsely invented the oracles" (Alos.2.176-177 [Colson, LCLJ, 278; Proem. 78); and Pseudo-Philo (L.A.B. 16:1) has Korahrebel because of the burden of the command of the fringes. Cf. LA.B. 25: 13, where"the forsaken of the tribe of Benjamin" say: "\Ve desired at this time to examinethe book of the law, whether God had plainly written that which was therein, orwhether Moses had taught it of himself." See Frederick J. Murphy, "Korah's

MOSES AND THE COM~1ANDMENTS 415

It is striking that these midrashic traditions employ much the samelanguage (e.g. 'O~DO, ,nDio, ':J~Q) in attributing to Korah the heresyof denying Moses' intermediary, divinely authorized role in the trans­mission of the commandments as do other midrashic traditions, inthe same collections, in celebrating Moses' halakhic innovations andtheir winning of divine approval and adoption. The dialectical ten­sion between the juxtaposed views of R. Judah b. llai and R. Judahthe Patriarch in the texts of the Mekiltas with which we began con­tinue through a long history of midrashic tradition, even as manynew halakhic examples and narrative elaborations are added: Mosesas a passive transmitter and" recorder of divine commandments vs.Moses as an active participant and contestant in the process by whichthe commandments came to be and to become authoritative. One(late) midrashic text best sums up this ambivalence as follows:

"And the LoRD said to Moses: Write for yourself (1' ore) these com­mandments": ... Another explanation of "Write for yourself": Theministering angels began to say before the Holy One, blessed be he,"Have you given permission to Moses to write whatever he wants, sohe may say to Israel, 'I gave you the Torah; it is I who wrote it andgave it to you'?" The Holy One, blessed be he, said to them, "Perishthe thought, that Moses would do such a thing, and even were he to doso, he is to be trusted, as it is said, 'Not so my servant Moses; he istrusted throughout my household' (Num 12:7)."42

In short, Moses and, I will further argue, his human (rabbinic) suc­cessors are divinely authorized and trusted both to transmit and totransform received tradition.

Rebellion in Pseudo-Philo 16," in Of Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible,Intertestamental Judaism, and Christian Origins (ed. H. W. Attridge, ].]. Collins, andT. H. Tobin; New York: University Press of America, 1990), 111-20. On the rebel­lion of Korah, see further Ginzbcrg, Legends, 6:100-102 n. 566.

4-2 Exod. Rah. 47:9. The Soncino translation seriously mistranslates the last phrasebefore the prooftext as, "and in whatever he does he can be fully trusted." TheHebrew is: ~1il iO~ ilIDlV '~"£l~1 iltil i:J'il n~ il(Di.!1 iliDOID C1~' on. That is, evenif Moses were to take full credit for having written the Torah and given it to Israel,what he has written in the Torah is still reliable as divine revelation. For thisunderstanding, see the commentaries of RaDaL (R. David Luria) and MaHaRZU(R. zeev Wolf b. Israel Issar Einhorn) ad loc.: even if Moses writes something onhis own, he does so prophetically in harmony with God's intent. See also A.Schremer, "ntDii£lOil iti"PDili nl"Dil n1JIDi£)il," 763 n. 51, who similarly sees herean attempt to ground rabbinic legal authority.

416 STEVEN D. FRAADE

VI. THREE EXPLANATORY S1RATEGIES

How are we to understand this deeply ambivalent record of rab­binic understandings of Moses' intermediary role in the communi­cation of divine commandments to Israel? I shall heuristically positthree vectors, which for purposes of simplification I shall refer to asscriptural hermeneutic, historical polemic, and peiformative rhetoric.

As I .sketched at the outset, the need to define Moses' mediativerole in revelation is abundantly supplied by the Hebrew Bible itself,i.e., in the differing perspectives of the latter four books of thePentateuch, one from the other, as to what was communicated byGod to Moses and by Moses to the people, when and where, andin the developing understandings of "Torah" as a written record ofrevelation in the subsequent books of the Bible. Since others havedealt with these matters extensively, I need not draw them out here."But for the rabbis, such macro issues are not what most immedi­ately and rhetorically prompt midrashic responses so much as theneed to fill apparent gaps and resolve seeming redundancies, ambi­guities, and inconsistencies at the micro level of the scriptural text(even while the macro issues remain in broader interpretive play).As we have repeatedly seen, both in the narrative account of therevelation at Sinai and in the particular formulations of laws andpractices, this is the level at which scriptural difficulties generate, for­mally at least, the wealth of rabbinic interpretations that we havesurveyed. Of course, it is not the scriptural barbs alone that areresponsible for the generation of the midrashic solutions (otherwisewe should have seen many more such responses in pre-rabbinic,Second Temple Je\'vish writings), but rather the meeting of discretescriptural stimuli and distinctive rabbinic "reading" practices, pred­icated as the latter are on rabbinic assumptions regarding the inter­pretability of the divine words of Scripture. But while local textualchallenges and rabbinic exegetical practices are necessary for the gen­eration of these rabbinic responses, they are not stdJicient for under­standing them in their dialectical plenitude nor in their historicalcontext. Scriptural exegesis is not a linear, mechanical process whosecourse can be simply reversed back from midrashic interpretation to

43 See above, n. 7.

its scriptural origins as if anesthetized from historical, social, and cul­tural intrusions along the way.

Can we identify parties, whether intramural or extramural, towardwhom the midrashic arguments we have surveyed might have beenpolemically targeted, even if indirectly? For example, several midrashictexts that we examined, both early and late, presuppose the exist­ence of a "heretical" claim that not all of the Torah was "fromheaven" and that some of the commandments were Moses' owninvention. This view is clearly evidenced in early Christian writings,already suggested in the New Testament. In Mark 10:2-9 Jesusargues that while Moses 'commandedz'perrnitted divorce with a"certificate of dismissal," this had not been God's original intentwhen he joined together male and female at creation. It was onlyin response to the people's stubbornness that Moses "made this rulefor you. . . . Therefore what God has joined together, man must notseparate." In other words, the law of divorce could be understoodto be Moses' O\\tTI invention and not necessarily indicative of thedivine will, and hence only a temporally-bound concession to humanweakness." Similarly, in Mark 7:1-13 Jesus argues against the Pharisees'"ancestral tradition" (paradosis ton presbyterim, literally, "teaching ofthe elders") on the grounds that the Pharisees give priority to such"ancestral tradition" over the Ten Commandments, "In this way byyour tradition, handed down among you, you make God's word nulland void."'4·5

The fact that it is one of the Ten Commandments that is singledout for contrast with the "ancestral tradition" as an example of divinecommandment versus humanly devised and transmitted tradition istelling. According to one mishnaic tradition, the Ten Commandments

MOSES AND THE COMl\fANDMENTS 417

44 Note that in the parallel in Matt 19:3-9, Jesus argues this in response to achallenge from the Pharisees.

45 In the parallel in Matt 15:1-9, the contrast is drawn even more sharply: "ForGod said ... But you say...." Of course, the contrast in these passages is notbetween Moses' word and God's word, but between the Pharisaic ancestral humantradition and the divine commands as communicated by Moses. Thus, where Mark(7:10) has "Moses said," Matthew (15:4) has "God said." Similarly, Mark 12:26 has"have you not read in the Book of Moses," whereas Matt 22:31 has "have you notread what was said to you by God." For New 'Testament passages that assumeMoses' "authorship" of the "law" in a positive sense, see Luke 16:29, 31; John 1:17,45; 5:46-47; 7:19, 22, 23. Compare Josephus's portrayal of the Sadducees' rejec­tion of the Pharisaic extra-scriptural "ancestral tradition," for which the Phariseesclaim divine approval: Ant. 13.297; 17.41.

418 STEVEN D. FRAADE

had formerly been read daily as part of the liturgy in the secondtemple, and according to its talmudic elaboration, that practice wasabolished so as not to strengthen the view of heretics (minnim), whowould argue that "these alone were given to Moses at Sinai. "46

Whatever the historicity of this account, it testifies at least to therhetorical possibility of claiming a unique revelatory status for theDecalogue. ''\!'hoever such minnim may have been, we know that therewere early Christians who differentiated between the status of theTen Commandments as divinely revealed and permanent and thatof other commandments in the "Old Testament" as having beenhumanly devised and temporary. This view is most sharply expressedby a second-century Valentinian Christian teacher named Ptolemy(fl. 136-180, possibly in Rome) in his Epistle to Flora, which dividesthe laws of the Old Testament according to their authorship, andthereby, authority:

Now, first you must learn that, as a whole, the law contained in thePentateuch of Moses was not established by a single author, I meannot by god alone: rather, there are certain of its commandments thatwere established by human beings as well. Indeed, our savior's wordsteach us that the Pentateuch divides into three parts. For one divisionbelongs to god himself and his legislations; while <another division>belongs to Moses-indeed, Moses ordained certain of the command­ments not as god himself ordained through him, rather based uponhis own thoughts about the matter; and yet a third division belongsto the elders of the people, <who> likewise in the beginning musthave inserted certain of their own commandments. (33.4.1-2)47

46 See m. Tamid5:1;y. BeT. 1:8 (3c); h. Ber. IIb-12a. For a classic discussion, seeEphraim E. Urbach, "The Role of the Ten Commandments in Je\Vish Worship,"in The Ten Commandments in History and Tradition (cd. B.-Z. Segal; Jerusalem: Magnes,1990), 161-89; repro in Collected J1/ritings in Jewish Studies (ed, R. Brody and M. D.Herr; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999), 289-317. For a more critical analysis, see ReuvenKimelman, "The Shema' and Its Rhetoric: The Case for the Shema' Being Morethan Creation, Revelation, and Redemption," ,Journal ofJev.tirlz TJwught and Philosophy2 (1992): Ill-56, esp. 155-56; idem, wfhe Shema' Liturgy: From Covenant Ceremonyto Coronation," in Kenishta: Studies in the Synagogue World (ed, J. Tabory; Ramat-Gan:Bar-nan University Press, 2001), 68-80.

47 Translation is from Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures (New York: Double­day, 1987), 309. The word "elders" translates the Greek presbyteroi. As Layton notesad Ioc.:"Or 'presbyters.' Ptolemy refers here to the elders who were with Moses 'inthe beginning.'" For the critical Greek text, see Gilles Quispel, ed., Ptolirn,ee, Leurea Flora: Analvse, texte critique, traduction, commentaire et index grec (2nd ed.; SC 24; Paris:Cerf, 1966), 54-57. For a discussion of Jc"wish hellenistic (and Jewish-Christian)antecedents to Ptolemy's division of the commandments, particularly in the writ­ings of Philo, see Francis T. Fallon, "The La\V in Philo and Ptolemy: A Note onthe Letter to Flora," VC 30 (1976): 45-51.

MOSES AND THE COMMANDMENTS 419

The divine laws of the Pentateuch are themselves divided into threecategories: The Ten Commandments alone are "pure legislation notinterwoven with evil, which alone is properly called law, and whichthe savior did not come to abolish but to fulfill" (33.5.1); while otherlaws are either "interwoven with injustice" (the lex talionis), and abol­ished by "the savior as being incongruous with his own nature"(ibid.), or are "symbolic," that is, "allegorical" (ritual laws), whose"referent" the "savior changed ... from the perceptible, visible levelto the spiritual, invisible one" (33.5.2). For our purposes it is impor­tant to stress Ptolemy's assertion that the laws devised by Moses andthe elders are contrary to the law of God (and rejected as such byJesus). 18

Given the near contemporaneity of Ptolemy and R. Judah b. Ilai(ca. 130-160 C.E.), and the degree to which their arguments wouldappear to mirror one another, it is tempting to imagine the latterresponding to the former (or at least his ideas) in exegetical dispute:''''hat if Moses altered or added to the directly revealed divine com­mands? He did so as a divinely pre-authorized agent of revelation,as did the elders who succeeded him! But there are problems withpositing a Christian (or gnostic Christian) context for the origins ofthe midrashic traditions that we have examined. The most significantis chronological: the traditions we have examined, while reachingfull bloom in late midrashic sources, are already well evidenced intannaitic midrashic collections (generally thought to have been redactedin the mid- to late third century, but containing earlier materials)."Scholars who wish to demonstrate the direct influence of Christianityin the formation of distinctive aspects of rabbinic Judaism are onstronger grounds if those aspects only elnerge when Christianity has

48 For a similar, but somewhat later and less radical, early Christian formulation,see Didascalia Apostolorum Syriacae chap. 26 (trans. Voobus [CSCO 408], 223-48),which differentiates between the Law, comprising the 'Ten Commandments and theJudgments (the mishpatim of Exod 21-23), which was given prior to the incident ofthe Golden Calf and is indissoluble, and the more burdensome "second legislation,"the rest of the laws (especially dietary and sacrificial), which were given by God inanger after the Golden Calf and from which Christians are freed through baptism.According to some rabbinic traditions, Israel received the commandments directlyfrom God before the Golden Calf incident, but only through mediation thereafter.See my "'The Kisses of His ~fouth.'"

4-9 On the dating of the Mekilta, see most recently Menahem Kahana, "TheCritical Edition of Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael in the Light of the Geniza Fragments,"Tarbi; 55 (1986): 515-20 [Hebrew].

420 STEVEN D. FRAADE

already ascended to imperial power after the Christianization of theRoman Empire (mid-fourth century on)." Whether nascent Christian­ity already had such an influential presence in relation to rabbinicJudaism in mid-second century to mid-third century Galilee is difficultto tell, but certainly less likely. It is more likely that later Christianwritings give expression to ideas that might have earlier circulatedwithin Jewish society, or on its fringes. Furthermore, the very ques­tions with which the early rabbinic traditions that we have exam­ined deal-to what extent are laws divinely revealed, divinely inspired,or the product of the human mind--were longstanding subjects ofinterest among Greek Jewish writers, ancient pagan philosophers,and pagan writers onJews andJudaism, among whom Moses as theJewish "Lawgiver" was both acclaimed and debunked."

Before being forced to choose between hermeneutical or histori­cist positivisms (as the choice is too often posed), we need to con­sider a third possibility: that these traditions are not so much aboutthe biblical past or contemporary extramural polemics as internalrabbinic self-understandings of the privileged human role of the sagein the performative enactment of Torah law and legal discourse aspart of a continual process of revelation from Sinai to the presentand beyond. TIlls is suggested by the interpretation (apparently sharedby the two R. Judahs) of Exod 19:9, that whatever the content ofthe dialogue between God and Moses, it was staged in the hearingof all of Israel so that they would trust not only in Moses but inthe elders and prophets who would succeed him thenceforth and

50 For this "line of argument, see most recently Daniel Boyarin, pyingfor God:Alar!Jrdom and the Afaking of Christiani9 and Judaism (Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress, 1999); Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E.

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).5i See john j. Gager, Moses in Greco-Roman Paganism (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972),

25-112; Mcnahem Stem, Greek and latin Authors onJcws andJudaism (3 vols.;Jerusalem:Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1976), 1:32, in note to Hecataeus ofAbdera 6: "Among the Greek') there was much discussion regarding the origin ofthe laws, i.e., whether they were divinely inspired or only products of the humanmind." For Ptolemy's possible (at least partial) dependence on Hellenistic je\o\rishantecedents, see Fallon, "The Law in Philo and Ptolemy." For evidence fromjosephus, see above, n. 29. For antecedents in Pseudo-Philo (usually dated to earlyfirst century C.E.), sec above, n. 4-1. For Moses as lawgiver in a wide range ofJe\\rishand .non-]ewish sources, see Wayne Meeks, The Prophet-King: Moses Traditions and the]ohannine Christology (NovTSup 14-; Leiden: Brill, 1967), 107, 112-13, 130, 132--33,171-72.

MOSES AND THE COMMANDMENTS 421

forever. In this context, it is R. Judah b. Ilai's interpretation (andsimilar, later rabbinic interpretations of specific Mosaic legal inno­vations) that is the more radical and in need of explanation: not somuch that Moses reliably recorded and transmitted God's words,but that God acceded to Moses' rational arguments and legal inno­vations as a model for all times thenceforth. Students of rabbinic lit­erature can easily bring to mind other texts in which similarly radical(yet also ambivalent) divine authorizations of rabbinic legal initiativeare exegetically grounded in the words of Scripture and, in somecases, traced back to the biblical elders, even while narratively framedin the context of intramural rabbinic disputes." Such texts are notsimply etiological, in the sense of tracing claims of rabbinic inter­pretive authority back to Sinai. Rather, in dialogically drawing theirown readers/students into such interpretive debate they are rhetor­ically performative and transformative in the here-and-now of theirtextual communities.

By now it should be clear that the three alternatives that I haveset out here are really not alternatives at all but are deeply inter­connected to, and inclusive of one another.f If hermeneutics is aninterpretive shuttle between a scriptural text and a scriptural com­munity situated in a different historical and cultural setting, thenhermeneutics cannot exist apart from having one foot planted in thatsetting. Likewise, if the most proximate historical context of any textis its own community of "readers," and if a text responds to andis shaped by extramural historical circumstances only via its dialog­ical engagement with, and transformation o~ its intramural textual

52 Examples that come to my mind, focusing on earlier rabbinic sources, arc asfollows: Sifre Deut. 154 (Finkelstein ed., 207, with note ad loc.), on Deut 17:11, con­cerning the (rabbinic) high court: "Even if they show you that right is left and leftis right, obey them" (cf Song Rab. 1:2[18]); m. RoJ' HaJ. 2:9 (cf Sifra 'Emor parashah9:9, 10), interpreting Lev 23:4 to mean, "whether at their proper time or not attheir proper time, I [God] have no other festivals than these," as set by the human(rabbinic) courts, extending the authority of the elders of Moses' time thenceforth; .~ tthe much celebrated story of R. Eliczer and the "Oven of Aknai" in b. B.",-~ IJ1 ~ "S \.'~5gb (baraita): "It is not in heaven.....After the majority must onc incline." See also ~ -,),above, n. 20.

5:\ for a more extensive discussion of these three "facings," see my from Traditionto Commentary, 13-18; as well as Richard S. Sarason, "Interpreting Rabbinic BiblicalInterpretation: The Problem of Midrash, Again," in Hesed Ve-Emet: Studies in 11onorofErnest S. Frerichs (ed. J. Magness and S. Gitin; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998),132-54, including discussion of other recent scholarship.

422 STEVEN D. FRAADE

community, then the connection between that text and its historicalcontext must run through its hermeneutical and rhetorical engage­ment with that community of readers, or in our case, students.

To conclude, in the words of Qohelet (4:12): niilO:J ~? \l)?tDQil~,ni1

pnJ' ("A threefold cord is not readily broken"). Rather than seekingin vain to isolate these three strands, we need to attend to thedynamic of their interplay."

5-4- An earlier version of this paper benefited from the critical responses of RichardSarason and Derek Krueger at a session of the History and Literature of EarlyRabbinicJudaism Section, Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, November25, 2002. Friends and colleagues contributed in \vays large and small to it') progress,especially when they criticized my interpretations: Rachel Anisfeld, Beth Berkowitz,Adela Yarbro Collins, Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Christine Hayes, Menahem Kahana,Ranon Katzoff Bernard Levinson, Chain} Milikowsky, Adiel Schremer, and AharonShemesh.